Business process automation starts with one process that repeats every day, passes through several people and where a mistake costs money: a contract with its invoice, writing off raw materials, receiving goods. First you map that path on paper from the first action to the money, then you decide whether an off-the-shelf program will do or you need your own system, and only then does anyone write code. Anything that happens rarely or differently every time is best left alone at the first stage.
What business process automation means in plain words
Put simply, it means a program does the repetitive work a person does today: moves data from one place to another, calculates, assembles a document, reminds about a deadline. People stay where a decision is needed.
What it is for becomes clear from the complaints clients bring us. At a legal firm, clients, deals, documents and money sat in different programs and spreadsheets, each paid for separately, with data copied between them by hand. At a knitting factory, yarn was estimated by eye and bought with a margin. In fulfilment, leads sit in a CRM, the warehouse in spreadsheets, shipments in marketplace dashboards and invoices in accounting, all reconciled by hand. Automation is there so that this copying and reconciling disappears and data is entered once.
Where to start: what to automate first and what to leave alone
Pick a process with three traits: it repeats often, more than one person takes part in it, and a mistake in it shows up in money or with a client. At GORONO that process was the contract with its invoice: it took 30-40 minutes to type, and mistakes in the company details surfaced after signing.
Good candidates for the first stage:
- Documents built from data you already have. Contracts, invoices, acts of completed work, commercial proposals. The client’s details are entered once and everything else is filled in.
- Calculations that follow a rule. Cost price by a usage norm, charges by a rate, tax based on actual cash movement.
- Transfers between programs. The bank statement into accounting, marketplace orders into the warehouse, website leads into the CRM.
- Reminders and checks. A deadline that must not be missed, a status that has to be checked on a government website.
What to leave alone for now. A process that runs differently every time will not get faster with software; the program will just fix the mess in place. Agree first on how it should run. The same goes for tasks that need experience and judgement: assessing a complex case, negotiating, unusual defects. That is what we decided at UZOR: the workshop camera starts by counting people and boxes, while recognising defects is left for a separate, much heavier stage.
The stages of business process automation
Our stages usually look like this.
- Describe the process as it is. Who does what, where the data lives, where it is copied by hand, where people wait for each other. At GORONO this step showed that when a case stalled, the client was sure they were waiting for the lawyer, and the lawyer was sure they were waiting for the client.
- Find where the data comes from. A lot of it never needs typing. Company details by tax number can come from EGRUL, the Russian state register of legal entities: the Federal Tax Service runs a service that delivers EGRUL and EGRIP data as files for information systems. The statement comes from the bank, orders from marketplace seller accounts.
- Write down the rules. Which details a document must have, how the amount is calculated, what happens with a disputed payment. For primary accounting documents the law sets part of the rules: article 9 of the Russian accounting law lists the mandatory details - the document’s name and date, the content of the business transaction, its value with units of measure, and the positions and signatures of those responsible. If the system builds an act, those fields must always be there.
- Split into modules and choose the order. At FullHouse every module has a written agreement with its neighbours: what receiving hands to storage, what shipping hands to returns, which events go to billing. The website with the CRM and receiving come first, the rest follows.
- Launch on live data and adjust. The system should not guess in unclear cases. At GORONO, payments that cannot be matched to a deal with certainty go to a “sort out manually” list.
An off-the-shelf platform or your own system
Business process automation systems come in three kinds: a subscription program for one task, a platform where you configure processes yourself, and your own system written for the company. Which one fits depends on how similar your process is to everyone else’s.
| Option | When it fits | What to keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription program | The process is standard and works the same way at many companies | The process adapts to the program, the data stays with the vendor |
| Configurable platform | The process is almost standard, you need your own fields and steps | Complex calculations and links between programs often hit its limits |
| Your own system | The process is unusual, data is spread across several programs | Slower to start, but the code, data and domain belong to the company |
GORONO’s process is unusual: a service lasts months, is built from the client’s documents and ends with a regulator’s decision, and a fire-safety (MChS) licence for a limited company has 16 blocks of documents. So we built one system with one database. FullHouse chose a warehouse system built around its own processes instead of a boxed product. If five sales managers run ordinary sales, you probably do not need your own system.
Examples of business process automation
Three examples from different industries. One project is already live, two we are building now.
GORONO: contract, invoice and act from one card
GORONO helps organisations obtain licences and accreditations. A client card is created from the tax number: name, registration numbers, address and current licences are pulled in automatically. A deal is built from a single service list.
The contract is assembled with a button from the deal’s data. The amount is calculated from the chosen services and cannot be typed by hand, so the figures in the header and in the appendix always match. The system writes the amount in words and puts names and the city into the right grammatical case on its own. The invoice carries a QR code for payment from a banking app. Contract, invoices and acts go to the client in one email straight from the deal card. A contract with an invoice now takes a couple of minutes, and the bank statement is pulled in every hour and finds its deal by itself.
UZOR: yarn usage and cost per article
UZOR is a system for a knitting factory that kept its records in a notebook and by eye. Yarn, fittings and packaging are kept in batches, and every article has a usage norm. The system knows how much yarn an order needs and how many items the current stock will make, and materials are written off for each order automatically.
Cost is calculated for every item: yarn, fittings, labour and packaging. When yarn goes up, you see which articles lost margin. Before, cost was a “yearly average”.
FullHouse: the warehouse up to shipping to marketplaces
FullHouse is a fulfilment operator. The software we are building for it takes goods from a supply request through receiving at the gate with a discrepancy report, addressed storage, picking and packing to shipping to marketplaces and handling returns. Every warehouse operation becomes a charge at the seller’s rate, and the invoice is built from those charges rather than from memory at month end. The website calculator and the warehouse charges take prices from one price list, so a seller never sees one price on the site and another on the invoice.
Frequently asked questions
Where should a small company start with business process automation?
With one process that repeats every day and where a mistake costs money, such as a contract with its invoice or raw material accounting. Describe it step by step as it is, mark where data is copied by hand, and automate those spots first.
Which processes are not worth automating?
Those that run differently every time and those that need an experienced person’s judgement. Agree on the process and settle it first, otherwise the program will repeat the confusion.
How is an automation platform different from your own system?
On a platform you configure processes from ready-made blocks, and complex calculations or links to other programs can hit its limits. Your own system is written around the company’s process, and the code and data stay with the company.
Can a new system be connected to the bank and marketplaces?
Yes, and those links usually save the most time. At GORONO the system pulls in the bank statement every hour, and FullHouse is designed to exchange orders, shipments and stock with the marketplaces.
Who your own system suits and what to do next
Your own system pays off where the process is unusual and runs through several programs: a service lasts weeks and is built from the client’s documents, raw materials go into products by a norm, a warehouse works with several marketplaces. More examples are in directions.
If this sounds like your situation, describe in the form below which process takes the most time and which programs hold your data today. That is where we will start.
